Brooking has never known it so tough

14 April 2012

As Trevor Brooking packed away his BBC microphone and ambled out of Highbury the other night a young lady in an Arsenal shirt shouted to him: "My mum loves you, Trevor!" Brooking smiled patiently and posed for photographs. "I can cope with that," he said. "It's when they say 'my gran loves you' that I worry."

A playing legend for anyone of a claret and blue persuasion, Brooking is 55 in October and at a time when others might be thinking of the carpet slippers and fireside chair he's about to devote himself with revivalist fervour to the plight of West Ham.

This doesn't mean that he's about to succeed his friend Glenn Roeder as manager. Although his short-term role as caretaker manager continues at Ipswich tomorrow, he's more concerned with the widening range of problems that instantly engulf clubs relegated from the Premiership.

Ipswich are a classic example of a club that got the figures spectacularly wrong.

Promotion in 2000 was followed by a fifthplaced finish in the Premiership in 2001 and, of course, high hopes and even higher wages. Then, disaster! They slipped back into Division One the following season and such were the financial pressures that administration became inevitable.

It's a scenario that is becoming increasingly familiar but one that West Ham have avoided by taking the hugely unpopular decision to sell four of their best, highest-paid players - Joe Cole, Glen Johnson, Freddie Kanoute and Trevor Sinclair - for nearly £20million. "No choice really," said Brooking, who is the club's part-time director of football.

"This period of time for West Ham is as difficult as any I can remember in the last 40 years," he said. "It's depressing and hugely frustrating and I can't see a solution to it. I think it'll get worse and the divide between the rich and poor in football will get bigger.

"Together Sky TV and the Champions League have changed everything. The structure of the modern game means that the financial implications of relegation from the Premiership can be really serious.

"We've looked at it closely. There was no bailout for us. Everyone said that if we kept our best players we'd bounce straight back. We could have done that had we found someone willing to write off £25m. We'd have needed that to keep the players and pay the wages because the revenue flow dives once you're out of the Premiership.

"I remember relegation as a player at West Ham in 1977-78. We were out of the top division for three seasons but that didn't mean we had to sell our best players. Nor did it mean the players wanted to leave the club."

The truth, 25 years ago, was quite the opposite. Within a year of relegation West Ham had spent a world record fee of £525,000 for a goalkeeper, Phil Parkes, another record fee of £430,000 for a teenager, Ray Stewart, and then £220,000 for Stuart Pearson from Manchester United and £800,000 for Paul Goddard from Queens Park Rangers.

No player left as a result of relegation. "I made up my own mind to stay," recalled Brooking. "I kept my place in the England team and I didn't need an agent to tell me what to do.

"Most agents these days tell their young players that an international career is dependent upon playing in the Champions League. Sven, they say, picks his England team from the Champions League clubs.

"Joe Cole was convinced that he wasn't getting in the England team because he wasn't with a Champions League club. He felt he had to learn to play in Europe. I suspect that in the end there will be a bottleneck involving the best players and the four English clubs in the Champions League. You're looking at the same, say, six clubs fighting for those places.

"Then you have the financial implications for clubs like Leeds who don't make it and clubs like Chelsea who just made it in the final game of the season. Had they not beaten Liverpool that day they wouldn't have got a Champions League place. In those circumstances would Roman Abramovich have bought them and invested £100m in players? I'm not sure.

"The risk for these big clubs is not making it into the Champions League for two or three successive seasons. They'd then be distancing themselves from the elite and slipping into the middle band of the Premiership - and that's not very deep. Most of the rest are simply fighting to avoid relegation from day one.

"For clubs like West Ham the hope is that we can produce more Joe Coles and Michael Carricks and use the loan system to help us while also helping the big clubs develop their talent.

"Neil Mellor is an example of a good young player who isn't going to get a regular game at Liverpool but has a much better chance of first-team football on loan to us.

"You have to hope, too, that good youngsters like Joe Cole and Jermain Defoe realise that there could be a downside to joining Chelsea, Arsenal and United.

"You might train regularly with quality players but is that sufficient compensation if you're sitting on the bench for two out of every three weeks?

"My answer to that is no. That's the sort of thing that would have made me think about my future as a player at West Ham."

MORE ABOUT

Ipswich

Joe Cole

Liverpool FC

West Ham United

Brooking has never known it so tough

Read More